Aquatic plants and vegetative groundcover, particularly farms and forests are essential carbon dioxide collectors, natural habitats for countless wildlife, and sources of fiber for applications ranging from paper products to building materials. Devastation of forests on almost all continents has occurred because of non-native pest introductions and greenhouse gas exacerbated climatic changes that have made forests vulnerable to pestilence, fire, wind, flood, and drought damages.
Throughout South, Central, and North America forest fires have destroyed vast stands of trees that have been weakened or killed by drought and disease. This represents an enormous loss of pulp and building materials. Fires and rot also produce greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane that further harm the global atmosphere. It is of paramount importance to provide practical solutions that enable rapid conversion of vegetative biomass into renewable supplies of fuels, electricity, and valuable materials before these materials are lost because of fires, decay, floods and erosion. A corollary objective is to facilitate rapid redevelopment of healthy forests, crops, and other groundcover and to facilitate production of fuel and sequestered carbon values from prescribed thinning and underbrush removal to improve forest conditions and to prevent the spread of harmful fires.
Increased demand has developed for hydrogen, oxygen, methane, carbon and other products that can be provided by thermochemistry and/or electrolytic dissociation of feedstocks such as biomass wastes. Past efforts to dissociate biomass by thermochemical methods began in earnest with William Murdock's production in 1792 of hydrogen by the reaction of steam with carbon donors such as peat, coal, and charcoal. More recently, steam reforming has been widely utilized by the petroleum industry to produce hydrogen from oil, natural gas, and other fossil feedstocks.
Carbon dioxide and methane releases into the global atmosphere cause climate changes that threaten extermination of up to ⅓ of all living species. Efforts to overcome greenhouse gas degradation of the atmosphere are noted in “Greenhouse Gas Carbon Dioxide Mitigation: Science and Technology” by Martin M. Halmann and Meyer Steinberg and in “Recent Advances in Environmental Economics” by John A. List and in “Greenhouse Gas Control Technologies: Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Greenhouse Gas Control Technologies” by John Gale.
Alternate approaches to methane and hydrogen manufacture have been through destructive distillation and anaerobic pyrolysis. Others have utilized falling water, wind, solar, and fossil energy sources to produce electricity that is applied to split water by electrolysis. Victoria M. Laube and Stanley Martin describe the use of microorganisms to gasify cellulose in “Conversion of Cellulose to Methane and Carbon Dioxide by Triculture of Acetivibrio Cellulolyticus Desulfovibro sp., and Methanocarcina Barkeri” (National Research Council of Canada). It is also well known that symbiotic relationships exist between larger species such as bovine animals and termites that consume lignocellulose and produce methane and carbon dioxide as a result of hosting such methane producing microorganisms in their digestive systems.
Efforts to provide technology for reducing problems encountered by these approaches are noted in publications such as “Hydrogen Production From Water By Means of Chemical Cycles”, by Glandt, Eduardo D., and Myers, Allan L., Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pa. 19174; Industrial Engineering Chemical Process Development, Vol. 15, No. 1, 1976; “Hydrogen As A Future Fuel” by Gregory, D. P., Institute of Gas Technology.
Problems with such systems include low energy-conversion efficiency and unacceptably high costs for capital equipment and infrastructure improvements, difficulties with scale up to tackle significant problems such as forest conversion, and high operating costs. In addition prior art approaches entail very large releases of carbon dioxide. Compressors required to pressurize hydrogen and/or methane and other products in such processes require sizeable capital expenditures, large expenditures for electricity and attendant production of greenhouse gases, and high operating costs. Further, unacceptable maintenance requirements and high repair expenses have defeated such approaches. Prior art waste-to-energy technologies provide severely limited capabilities if not counterproductive results for overcoming the growing problem of climate changes due to greenhouse gas accumulations in the global atmosphere. In summary, prior art technologies are too expensive, too wasteful, and too polluting.
It is therefore an object of some embodiments of the present invention to provide systems and methods for sustainable economic development through integrated full spectrum production of renewable nutrient resources, which can include the use of an electrochemical or electrolytic cell, and a method of use thereof, for separated production of nutrient resources to address one or more of the problems set forth above.